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While researching this post, I discovered that there are actually quite a lot of wicker motorcycles. Presumably they’re popular because of high gas prices. This particular one was spotted in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada.
Link -via Geekosystem | Photo: Wendyvee
In a lovely design juxtaposition, this custom motorcycle features a pair of jet engines mounted to a frame modeled after a 1929 Harley-Davidson design. It can reach 200 MPH, and in truly Harley fashion, does so loudly. This bike, which the owner claims is the only one in the world powered with two jet engines, is currently for sale on eBay.
You don’t need hands. All you need to close the tailgate of a truck is a motorcycle, as stunt rider EndoJoe demonstrates.
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Sure, a light trial bike can be turned sharply and quickly, but how about an 800-pound Harley-Davidson Road King? Here’s a video of Donnie Williams of Grand Prairie, Texas, taking his patrol motorcycle through a series of precise, tight turns. He doesn’t knock over a single cone. -via MArooned
During the championship at Magny-Cours, two motorcycles become entangled, apparently by their accelerators. Or maybe they just like each other. -via The Daily What
Royal Enfield is an Indian manufacturer of classic British-style motorcycles. Much of the work is done by hand, including painting the iconic pinstripes and logo on the gas tank. This amazing video shows one plant worker — or artist, I should say — adding perfectly formed pinstripes completely freehand.
-via Boing Boing | Jay Leno Explores Royal Enfield
Engineering students in Palwal City, India, built a motorcycle that runs on a tank of compressed oxygen:
“This bike is different from others because the engine doesn’t burn fuel, nor does the temperature rise. The air is compressed and transferred to the engine without any combustion. The piston reciprocates from the air pressure leading to an up-down movement, making the flywheel run and the bike move.”
Students say the basic concept behind the invention is to achieve an equivalent thrust of blast inside the engine without using any combustion.
The bike can run at a speed of six to 12 miles an hour for up to 370 miles using 100 liters of 300 PSI oxygen.
Video at the link.
A Jalopnik reader sent in this photo of a custom motorcycle with dangerously high ape hanger handlebars:
The high handlebars — “ape hangers” in chopper speak — rank among the tallest in the world, and far exceed the 15-inch height above the seat allowed by Missouri state law. We’d guess the tassels are there for both fashion and safety; they give the bike that backstage-at-Altamont vibe and can be used as grips when the rider inevitably loses control after all the blood drains from his arms.
deviantART user dkart71 doesn’t offer a lot of verbal detail about this work, but his level of artistic detail is impressive. His gallery is filled with similar pieces, including choppers and trikes.
A quarter of a century ago Elspeth Beard rode around the world on a used 1974 R 60/6 flat-twin that had 30,000 miles on it before the trip began. The twenty-four year old Elspeth began her journey in New York. She had several accidents, her things were stolen, and she got hepatitis and dysentery before her trip ended in London three years later . She lost 53 lbs on the trip and added 48,000 miles to her R60′s odometer. The bike is remarkably still in running order. Ms Beard is one of a very small number of women to have circled the globe on a motorcycle and was the first British woman to do so.
Dark Roasted Blend has a follow up to its previously posted gallery of exotic motorcycles. This time, you can view strange and wonderful motorcycles of the past. Among them is this 1937 military prototype with tracks in the front. It’s one of three built by France. You can view these and other marvelous motorcycles at the link.
Link via Make | Photo: Kneeslider
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This Friday’s Museum of Possibilities offers several ideas for new types of motorcycles. In this exercise, the concept of the basic motorcycle has been mined for its potential to provide a platform for new uses or added functions. These are not add-ons, conversions or mods, but complete motorcycle designs. Of course, sidecars and small trailers already exist. These concepts are offered merely to widen the discussion!
Artist Jud Turner of Eugene, Oregon, made this sculpture out welded steel. It’s about 44 inches long and is callled “MortalCycle”. In his artist’s statement, he writes:
Using welded steel and found objects, I create artwork which embraces opposites — the tension between humans and nature; the perils of balancing biology and technology; or the combination of ancient fossils with modern machinery. I also engage contradictions by the materials I choose — human forms which appear solid and realistic, but which were made with a delicate surface of thin wire, allowing the viewer to see through the figure; or by mixing the sense of scale in a piece, using large items alongside tiny pieces.
Link via Geekologie | Photo by the artist
Previously: Skeleton Bicycle
The story circulating about this video is that the man on the motorcycle is a gymnast. Just before he smacked into the side of a truck, he intentionally vaulted over the handlebars. At the end of the video, on his feet and apparently not seriously injured, the man walked back into view.
via Geekosystem
This image is going around the Internet. It shows a motorcyclist wearing rollerblades while cruising down a busy highway. Safe or not?
via Geekologie
Michael Wiles of Melbourne, Australia was riding his motorcycle when he found a grill by the side of the road. He decided to take it home and so placed it over his body and started riding. Police investigated the incident after the above photo of him began circulating the Internet:
Paul McClure, his defence lawyer, said Mr Wiles’s excuse was “lack of thought processes” at the time and poverty.
“It turned out the barbecue was a dud and did not work, and that’s probably why it was at the side of the road,” Mr McClure said.
“This is stupid behaviour and nobody should do it.”
Link | Photo: unknown, via Daily Telegraph
Chinese artist Shi Jindian made a wire frame replica of the Chiangjiang 750, a Chinese knock-off of a the classic BMW R71 motorcycle:
Shi Jindian’s sculptures are made of steel, yet they are light, transparent, almost ethereal. After searching for years for “a material that was brand new, completely untraditional”, he settled on steel wires. By trial and error, he learned how to crochet the two-dimensional strands into three-dimensional forms, using tools of his own devising. His wire meshes start out as wrappings around some common object. When the mesh is complete, Shi Jindian destroys or extracts the object, leaving only its steel exoskeleton. The result, he says, is a kind of fiction, a virtual reality that can be walked around and touched. Surrealist René Magritte painted a pipe along with the words: “This is not a pipe.” Shi Jindian does something similar in sculpture, making not-quite-replicas of items from musical instruments to machines.
Link (select “Portfolio”) via OhGizmo! | Photo: White Rabbit Gallery
O. Ray Courtney was a designer from the 1930s-1950s who applied Art Deco stylistic principles to motorcycles. Pictured above is a 1936 motorcycle that he built in that style from a 1930 Henderson, carefully restored by its owner, Frank Westfall. You can view more pictures of this beauty at the link.
Link via Make | Photo: Knucklebuster
Allert Jacobs spent three years and $5,000 building a motorcycle that gets 200 miles to the gallon. It’s based on the Honda Innova design, but heavily modified to make it more aerodynamic:
He first built a resistance-reducing nose cone in 2007, in an attempt to increase his Honda Innova 125i’s 114-mpg rating. That design fell short, so he built a 1:5 scale model, followed by a full-size polyurethane and wood mold. By 2009, he was crafting the fiberglass shell. Steel tubes welded to the bike’s frame attach it, and a frame and rails added to the front of the bike allow the front of the shell to slide forward like a door and lock shut. Last winter, he even made aerodynamic cones with indicator lights for his side-view mirrors.
Most of the mileage boost comes from the aerodynamic shape, but Jacobs also converted the bike’s automatic clutch to manual to keep it from slipping. Altogether, the changes worked: On one long trip, the bike got 214 miles per gallon.
Link | Photo: Hans Pieterse
Comments Off When Puerto Rican man David Morales Colón died, he wasn’t displayed in a casket at his wake, but astride his motorcycle:
Yesterday and today, callers who stopped to pay their final respects to the late Mr. Colón got a bit of a surprise. Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón’s corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4. According to Puerto Rico’s Primera Hora newspaper, the motorcycle was given to the victim by his uncle, and upon Mr. Colón’s untimely demise, family members delivered the bike to the funeral home specifically for this unusual wake.
Link via Geekologie
Now That’s Nifty has a gallery of thirty unusual motorcycles, including those converted into campers, limos, and tracked vehicles. Among them is the massive Leonhardt Gunbus, which is powered by a massive 410 cubic inch engine:
When it comes to custom motorcycle builders, there’s crazy and there’s really crazy. Falling into the latter category is one Mr. Clemens F. Leonhardt, who has just finished building what he refers to as “the world’s biggest motorcycle.” Excluding some other crazy creations, such as the Monster Bike, the guy’s got a point. Unlike other two-wheeled behemoths, the Leonhardt Gunbus is actually ready to ride on normal roads and will soon go into series production. That’s right… you’ll actually be able to buy one of these. Next on the agenda is an equally massive sidecar, which somehow seems just right for this bike.
Link via The Presurfer | Information on the Leonhardt Gunbus | Photo: Niot
Robosteel is a Dublin-based art studio that builds frightening-looking sculptures out of scrap metal. Pictured above is one in the image of the alien queen from the movie Alien, made from 1,200 pounds of Yamaha motorcycle parts. The artists assert that their inspiration is a simple Picasso sculpture:
Picasso’s sculpture of the bicycle saddle and a handlebar was the first example of a work made from everyday things, using junk or scrap. Like other of Picasso’s firsts this work opened up new possibilities for artists. In this instance – sculptors, who for centuries had employed traditional materials such as stone or wood now instead, many of them began to incorporate junk materials into their work (known as assemblages) or fashion new objects from them. The works are a great example of the inventive genius of Picasso and the ultimate inspiration for RoboSteel.
The Snaefell is the creation of François Knorreck, a French hospital technician who spent €15,000, 10 years, and 10,000 hours of work on the project. It’s a 1976 Laverda motorcycle with a custom-built sidecar made from Renault, Citroen, BMW, VW and Audi parts. More pictures at the links.
Link via The Presurfer | Official Website
British nuclear engineer Allen Millyard is known for building huge motorcycles, often using car engines to replace the factory engines. His latest creation is this motorcycle, which uses a 500-hp, 8,400cc engine from the Dodge Viper sports car. That’s as impressive as his prior feat of mounting two 6-cylinder engines on one bike.
Frankie Flood is an artist and professor of jewelry and metalsmithing at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He makes custom pizza cutters inspired by American motorcycles, such as the one above apparently modeled on the work of Mantis Choppers. Flood writes:
My work investigates one of a kind objects and their role in a world based on mechanical reproduction. Industry has removed the aura from objects and stripped them of their individuality. My pizza cutters seek to demolish the sterile conformity of mass produced objects and represent the stylistic and flamboyant embellishment of groups who live on the fringe of popular culture. The outlaw biker image is a break from the conformity that has taken over America since industrialization. My machined pizza cutters draw inspiration from chopper motorcycles and attempt to reclaim the mythology and economic usefulness of the American worker as patriarch; translating machine or functional object into flesh and blood. The outlaw as defiant nonconformist, as well as social outcast, parallels being an artist who makes functional objects and being an individual who takes pride in the power of invention and skill.
Link via Geekologie
When I was six, my mother sewed a piece of velcro on an old blue towel. That was my Batman outfit. This is better: a functional set of motorcycle leathers modeled after the Batsuit in the movie The Dark Knight. Put one on, hop on your Vespa, and relish the attention. Because nothing impresses people better than wearing a superhero costume.
Link via Geekologie
